The universal shipbuilding practice of putting the rivets through the plate from the inside of the hull and then hammering them down from the outside was not applicable to torpedo boat construction because the plates were much thinner. Messrs. Yarrow and Co. of Poplar had used a different technique to construct the torpedo boat they had recently completed for the Chinese Navy. Rivets with countersunk heads were passed through the plates from the outside and then hammered down from the inside. A solid countersunk head was considered to be far more trustworthy than one formed by being hammered. The torpedo boat built by Messrs. Yarrow and Co. for the Chinese Navy using this method had completed the voyage from England to Hong Kong without leaking a drop of water despite the fact that it had encountered very heavy weather during the voyage.